This fall, the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture celebrates launch of four significant research projects by Maurice Berger — new exhibition websites Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television and For All the World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights, the creation of a new online home for Berger’s “Race Stories” essays, and the extension of a national tour of For All the World To See through the National Endowment for the Humanities’ On the Road program. Continue reading UMBC’s Maurice Berger launches new research projects with the CADVC

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in The New York Times, published September 17, Maurice Berger, research professor at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, examines the work of photographer Marion Palfi and her relatively unknown photo book, There Is No More Time: An American Tragedy. “Juxtaposing portraits,” says Berger, “Ms. Palfi’s written observations and interview excerpts, There Is No More Time chronicles the many faces and viewpoints of white supremacy in Irwinton: the obedience to God and family; the religious and pseudoscientific justifications for believing that black people were inherently inferior; the resentment of outside intervention … Continue reading Maurice Berger, CADVC, latest “Race Story” column in The New York Times

The exhibition Where Do We Migrate To?, organized by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture and curated by Niels Van Tomme, is traveling to Sweden, where it will open on Saturday, September 19, at the Värmlands Museum in Karlstad, remaing on display through February 22, 2016. The exhibition explores contemporary issues of migration as well as experiences of displacement and exile. Situating the contemporary individual in a world of advanced globalization, the artworks address how a multiplicity of migratory encounters demand an increasingly complex understanding of the human condition. As such, the exhibition allows multiple perspectives about its subject … Continue reading CADVC’s “Where Do We Migrate To?” exhibition travels to Sweden

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in The New York Times, Maurice Berger, research professor at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, examines the research of photographers Martin Parr and Ruben Lundgren, whose exploration of Chinese photobooks has resulted in The Chinese Photobook, published by Aperture. Largely unknown in the West, the photobooks, dating from the early 20th century to current times, document a nation undergoing profound cultural change. “The sheer quantity of important Chinese photobooks that remain unexamined by scholars within and outside of the country suggests that considerable work remains to done,” says Berger. “In … Continue reading Maurice Berger, CADVC, Latest “Race Story” in The New York Times

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in The New York Times, Maurice Berger, research professor at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, examines the shifting attitudes toward the Confederate battle flag. “The image was at once mundane and historic. In Alabama last Wednesday, on the order of Gov. Robert Bentley, workers took down the Confederate battle flag on the grounds of the state Capitol and were photographed as they did. The camera, whose role it was to record a reality — and thus to make visible its compelling details of the world — now documented a symbol’s imminent … Continue reading Maurice Berger, CADVC, Latest “Race Story” in The New York Times

Maurice Berger, research professor and chief curator at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, was interviewed by WYPR’s Culture Editor for Maryland Morning, Tom Hall, about Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television, an exhibition now on display at the Jewish Museum in New York. Berger curated the exhibition, which has been co-organized by the CADVC and the Jewish Museum, and authored the companion book by the same name, published by Yale University Press. Revolution of the Eye is the first exhibition to explore how avant-garde art influenced and shaped the look and content of … Continue reading Maurice Berger, CADVC, Discusses “Revolution of the Eye” on WYPR

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in The New York Times, Maurice Berger, research professor at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, examines the work of Charles “Teenie” Harris, an African American staff photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier from the 1930s through the 1970s. Now held in the archives of the Carnegie Museum of Art, a selection of 80,000 images by Harris are now on display in “Teenie Harris Photographs: Cars,” second in a series of exhibitions that began with “Teenie Harris Photographs: Civil Rights Perspectives.” The museum “asked writers — including poets, playwrights and historians — to … Continue reading Maurice Berger, CADVC, Latest “Race Story” in The New York Times

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in The New York Times, Maurice Berger, research professor at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, examines a new exhibition at the Bronx Museum of Art, “Three Photographers From the Bronx: Jules Aarons, Morton Broffman and Joe Conzo,” which opens Thursday, February 26. “Over the past 40 years,” writes Berger, “our collective view of the Bronx has all too often embraced the media-driven myth of its inexorable decline. For many, the blight, addiction and poverty that plagued parts of the South Bronx in the 1970s have come to symbolize the … Continue reading Maurice Berger, CADVC, Latest “Race Story” in The New York Times

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded $40,000 in support of the exhibition Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television, curated by Maurice Berger, research professor and chief curator of the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC). The exhibition has been co-organized by the CADVC and The Jewish Museum in New York, which will administer the grant funds. The exhibition, which will open May 1, 2015 at The Jewish Museum before embarking on a national tour, addresses the modernist aesthetic and conceptual principles that have influenced American television from its inception, and examines … Continue reading “Revolution of the Eye” Receives Funding from the National Endowment for the Arts

Maurice Berger, research professor and chief curator of the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, has been awarded a $30,000 Arts Writers Grant from Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation. The grant supports research for Berger’s monthly column, Race Stories, for the Lens Blog of The New York Times. The blog explores the relationship of photography to concepts, themes, and social or regional issues about race not usually covered in the mainstream media. Berger plans to conduct research on Robert Frank, focusing on contact sheets, notes, and shooting scripts for a two-part essay on Frank’s representations of race in … Continue reading Maurice Berger, CADVC, Awarded Grant from Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation

Revolution of Eye, an exhibition organized by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture and the Jewish Museum in New York, and curated by Maurice Berger, research professor and chief curator at the CADVC, received coverage in Broadway World on October 1. (Click here to read the article). The exhibition will open in May 2015 and will be the first to explore how avant-garde art influenced and shaped the look and content of network television in its formative years, from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s. A microsite that provides a preview to the exhibition is now available here. Continue reading Revolution of the Eye in Broadway World

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in The New York Times, Maurice Berger, research professor at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, shares his views on Father Figure: Exploring Alternate Notions of Black Fatherhood, a new book by a Toronto-based photographer and physician, Zun Lee. While the book’s images of African-American fathers may at first seem ordinary — for example, a man feeding his baby as his other children play nearby — Berger notes that the photographs “are in one sense unusual: Their subjects are black and counter mainstream media that typically depict African-American fatherhood as a wasteland of dysfunction … Continue reading Maurice Berger, CADVC, Latest “Race Story” in The New York Times

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in The New York Times, Maurice Berger, research professor at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, shares his take on the thousands of photographs flooding out of Ferguson, Missouri. “Historically, photography was integral to the fight against racism and segregation. Leaders from Sojourner Truth to Malcolm X embraced the photograph’s potential as evidence and its ability to combat stereotypes,” writes Berger. “But sometimes, as in Ferguson, the camera has served as a more spontaneous ‘weapon of choice,’ as the photographer Gordon Parks called it, wielded by the oppressed in moments of anger, fear or … Continue reading Maurice Berger, CADVC, Latest “Race Story” in The New York Times

Niels Van Tomme, Visiting Curator of the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, has been named Curator of the 7th Bucharest Biennale (Bucharest International Biennial for Contemporary Art), to take place May 26 to July 17, 2016. The Bucharest Biennale is interested in exploring links between creative practice and social progress, as well as correspondences between local and global contexts. Now in its tenth year, the Biennale continues to build a strong partnership between Bucharest—a geocultural space where the political is reflected in all aspects of life—and the rest of the world. In transcending specific geographical, historical, or political frameworks, it … Continue reading Niels Van Tomme, CADVC, Named Curator of the 7th Bucharest Biennale

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in The New York Times, Maurice Berger, research professor at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, examines Dawoud Bey’s intimate and powerful 2007 portrait of Barack Obama prior to becoming president. The essay is being co-published by the Hillman Photography Initiative at the Carnegie Museum of Art. “The photograph depicts its famously private and introspective subject only months before he was to step into the abyss of presidential politics. And it defines him free of the stereotypes and myths that have come to characterize his presidency,” observers Berger. Read “Meditation on … Continue reading Maurice Berger, CADVC, Latest “Race Story” in the New York Times

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has awarded Maurice Berger, CADVC, a $100,000 grant in support of his forthcoming curatorial project, Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television. Berger was awarded $50,000 by the Warhol Foundation to support the research of Revolution of the Eye in 2012. This exhibition and publication project represents the first collaborative institutional effort between the CADVC and the Jewish Museum in New York, where Maurice holds the title of Consulting Curator. The grant will be administered by The Jewish Museum. Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television is currently scheduled to … Continue reading Maurice Berger, CADVC, Receives Warhol Foundation Fellowship

“What is our current understanding of foreignness and otherness? What is the threshold at which something becomes ‘other’ or ‘foreign’?” These remarks by IMDA MFA candidate Victor Torres, recently appeared in a review of his project, “Highlandtown Pop-Up” by The Baltimore Guide. IMDA MFA candidate, Kata Frederick, also appeared in a performance at the event. “Highlandtown Pop-Up” was made possible through a partnership between Highlandtown Main Street, a program of the Southeast Community Development Corp., the Highlandtown Arts District, and the Community Outreach Program of UMBC’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC). As member of the Highlandtown Arts … Continue reading Sandra Abbott, CADVC, Kata Frederick and Victor Torres ’15, IMDA MFA, in The Baltimore Guide